Instilling fear

WAH CANTT: Terrorists attacked the public gathering at Wagah on November 2, 2014 to instill fear. Following this tragedy, terrorists launched a dastardly attack on the Peshawar school to mar the spirits of our military troops who are engaged in an operation against terrorism in the tribal areas. The motive behind these continuous attacks is not for any gains of faith or strategy — these attacks are only being launched to instill fear into Pakistanis, to divide them, to create rifts and tensions between the civilians and the military, to engender distrust between the people of the same nation. Now, the government is taking serious and appreciable steps on an urgent basis to tackle the menace of terrorism such as the execution of terrorists who were sentenced to death.

However, some of the government’s steps do not seem to make a lot of sense. Winter vacations in a number of schools have been extended and many schools have increased their fees to allow for “more security”. But how will a school give security to its students when that is the responsibility of the state? The government gave winter holidays initially and further extended them to end of January on the basis of continuous threats and some intelligence reports which stated that banned outfits are planning on launching terrorist attacks of the same nature as they did on APS Peshawar. Owing to the extension of winter holidays in a number of schools, the schedule for examinations will have to be drastically revised and the syllabi will have to be crammed in a short period of time. The students will face a serious disadvantage as they will not be imparted knowledge in the most favourable way. The government needs to think of alternative measures to deal with the security situation.

Muhammad Ali

Published in The Express Tribune, January 9^th,  2015.

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